Our Road: Now -- E12: PCB Landfill Site "Open Wound" That Should Not Be Developed

Our Road to Walk: Then and Now

In this episode, we are pausing our chronological narrative of the origins of the Warren County environmental justice movement in order to address current issues related to the status of the PCB landfill site.
On September 24, 2022, EPA Director Michael Regan and an entourage of EPA officials, civil rights representatives, and fence line community leaders from across the country met on the Warren County Courthouse Square to announce the EPA’s newly branded Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights. Director Regan announced the new office will be funded $3 billion in order to ensure that underserved and overburdened communities are at the forefront of EPA’s work.
In connection with the 2022 40th anniversary of the 1982 PCB protest movement, county officials had hired a hydrogeologist, Joan Smyth, to investigate the PCB landfill site.
At a January 9, 2023 Warren County Commissioners’ meeting, Smyth presents her report of the limited four test samples that she had taken from the PCB landfill site and says that the levels of PCBs in the soil were well below the EPA threshold.
She explains that much of the early PCB records are difficult to find.
In this episode, Ken and Deborah address Smyth’s report and provide damning evidence based on the documents and reports of four independent scientists who served Warren County citizens at different times between 1978 - 2004.
These records provide an in-depth and comprehensive characterization of the PCB landfill site and raise the most serious questions about any initiative that would argue for development at the site.
Ken and Deborah address the manipulation of science to protect principle responsible parties, in this case, the state of North Carolina and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Commissioner Davis describes the PCB landfill as an “open wound.” He is right.
The PCB landfill is not only still a literal toxic wound in the body of Afton and Warren County; the coverup of the landfill’s failures is an open, festering wound that has spread like a pervasive cancer in the environmental justice community and across the nation.
Based on the evidence they share, the Ferruccios maintain that there is no scientific or ethical justification to develop the PCB landfill site and that to do so would be antithetical to the principles of environmental justice.